For Alice Bag, punk was always more than just music – its a way of life.

Born in East Los Angeles to immigrant Mexican parents, Bag first embraced musics riotous energy when she founded the Bags with Patricia Morrison in 1977.

The band only lasted four years but made an indelible mark on the burgeoning LA punk scene, thanks in no small part to how the young singer transformed the blunt trauma of her daily life into onstage energy.

Bag continued to upend the expectations of what a woman could do in music throughout the 80s, all while going to college and beginning a new career as a teacher.

This quiet reinvention ultimately took Bag away from music, though she kept sharing insights and lessons online and in her memoir "Violence Girl."

In 2016, nearly four decades after she first became a singer, Alice Bag released her self-titled debut solo album.

The conversation is presented in partnership with the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries as part of Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A at MOCA.